Valleys

SAN FRANCISCO — Last year, a startup called Party Round announced itself with a flurry of memes. For months, amateur investors had been going gangbusters, buying up stocks, cryptocurrencies and digital art known as NFTs. But getting in early on the next hot tech startup was still a professional’s game. Party Round’s big idea was to let startups easily raise money from family members, former co-workers, bosses and others in their networks. “Invest in friends,” Party Round’s tagline urged before its launch. For a while, it…

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Social media has lately been overrun by stunning and strange images generated by AI In Silicon Valley, crypto and the metaverse are out. Generative AI is in. Silicon Valley has a new obsession. It’s called “generative artificial intelligence,” which refers to having computers take over creative tasks such as writing, filmmaking, and graphic design. That much became clear Monday night at the San Francisco Exploratorium, where Stability AI, the start-up behind the popular Stable Diffusion image-generating algorithm, gave…

Soaring thousands of feet above the meandering trails of the Yosemite Valley floor, monoliths with names like El Capitan and Sentinel Rock stand watch like mythological titans of old.Just how long they've dominated the landscape isn't clear, with previous estimates on their emergence ranging anywhere from tens of millions to just 15 million years ago.A new attempt to clarify the timing of Yosemite Valley's evolution has found previous measures may have been off the mark, with its stunning granite skyline thought to have…

The deep valleys transported vast amounts of meltwater away from under the ice sheets that covered the UK and Europe. Credit: James Kirkham / BASDeep valleys buried under the seafloor of the North Sea record how the ancient ice sheets that used to cover the UK and Europe expelled water to stop themselves from collapsing.A new study greatly surprised the research team, who discovered that the valleys took just hundreds of years to form as they transported vast amounts of meltwater away from under the ice and out into the…

Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsStable Diffusion's web interface, DreamStudioScreenshot/Stable DiffusionComputer programs can now create never-before-seen images in seconds.Feed one of these programs some words, and it will usually spit out a picture that actually matches the description, no matter how bizarre.The pictures aren't perfect. They often feature hands with extra fingers or digits that bend and curve unnaturally. Image generators have issues with text, coming up with nonsensical signs or making up their own…

Graphic shows deep channel under the North Sea. Credit: James Kirkham @BAS Deep valleys buried under the seafloor of the North Sea record how the ancient ice sheets that used to cover the UK and Europe expelled water to stop themselves from collapsing. …

It’s out “this fall” A Disney Dreamlight Valley Toy Story update is on the way, and now we have a full-length trailer to see what that actually entails. Like most character-based things in Dreamlight, it’ll feature new quests (with Woody and Buzz), as well as an additional space to roam around in, and new items. Based on the trailer you’ll enter the new space similar to the other lands in the game (like Moana): through a special door in the castle. This time, the Toy Story realm is symbolized by a drawing of an…

The power of Y Combinator has always been its network. The legendary Silicon Valley startup accelerator is known for smelting mere ideas into some of the most successful companies in technology, including Reddit, Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe. And in turn, the mythologies of those companies often commemorate crucial early contributions from people within Y Combinator’s powerful circles.Yet Y Combinator’s success has also inspired a torrent of copycats, and today’s entrepreneurs have their choice of many incubators,…

Monument Valley, the picturesque puzzle game series where players must navigate maps full of optical illusions, will no longer be exclusive to mobile devices. The complete Monument Valley Panoramic Collection is set to arrive on Steam on July 12th and gives players a broader point of view that isn’t limited by the vertical orientation of phones and tablets. Ustwo, the developer behind Monument Valley, says it had to make some adjustments to account for a wider perspective, as well as for the transition from touch to…